The experiences and exploits of a college grad trying to make it in the "real world:" leaving school and friends in New England, moving south, and living with her boyfriend. Watch as I pretend to be an adult.
Incidentally, if anyone can tell me what my title quote is from, I will... er, be very, very impressed? Yes.
Today a truly unexpected thing happened. A wonderful thing. A glorious thing. The clouds parted, the sun shone down... and I was able to actually have lunch with my boyfriend! Many thanks to my coworker who had to switch lunches with me so she could go to a doctors appt. I got a tasty Vietnamese meal of summer rolls and chicken pho out of it (and, of course, time with my always charming SO)...I'm thinking she got the short end of the stick.
But no matter.
I was listening to NPR on the drive over to the restaurant, when I heard one of the most retarded comments ever to have assaulted my ears. Now, before I go any further, I should say that I usually love NPR and have a great deal of respect for what they do. They USUALLY bring intelligent, informed people on to their shows, and this just happened to be a rare miss.
This man, who was apparently promoting his book on left-handedness said, and I paraphrase here, "There must be some genetic reason that left-handedness has not been bred out of the human gene pool. Clearly there must be some societal benefit to having lefties."
*deep breath*
GENETICS DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!!
The only time a trait can be "bred out" of a population naturally (as a process of evolution and not selective breeding) is when that trait directly and negatively affects the organism's reproductive viability.
Now, I could go into a long, complex discussion on the expression of genes, alleles, and the general principles of Mendelian genetics (poor Gregor is probably spinning in his grave right now), but I won't. I will simply say:
When you're discussing population genetics, the only way to eliminate a trait from the gene pool is to eliminate all of the organism who carry the allele combination that expresses that trait BEFORE THEY CAN REPRODUCE. 99.9999% of the time the only way that can happen is if the trait makes it impossible for the affected organisms to produce offspring, either by killing them young or making them sterile.
Saying that there must be some "societal benefit" to having left handed organisms is like saying there must be some "societal benefit" to having curly haired organisms. It's pure nonsense.
Psuedoscience makes baby jeebus cry!
After 22 posted at 8:01 PM
